Showing 1-10 of 12 results
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Edit your apps
Life, James Hein, Published on 01/07/2020
» - I've never been a Twitter user as I find that platform full of bullies and one-sided, poorly researched commentary. By comparison I am now active on Parler, which is a similar platform, but is not restricted to only those ideas that Twitter supports. It is populated by people whose ideas I enjoy reading. If you are bored with the Twits on Twitter then come on over to Parler as an alternative.
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AI deserves our human paranoia
Life, James Hein, Published on 14/08/2019
» For most of my IT career I have seen promises of the "silver bullet" application. The modern iteration of this is the overused promise of Artificial Intelligence. Every man and his dog are jumping onto this marketing bandwagon and Microsoft has been no exception making it part of their database offerings.
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Human override here to stay
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/04/2019
» Computers are useful tools and they will emotionlessly churn through thousands of operations in the blink of an eye to produce whatever results they were programmed to do. Most of the time the results are welcomed. When it comes to malware the results generate a different reaction, and then there are those spaces in the middle. The situation surrounding the Boeing 737 Max MCAS aircraft and the recent crash is an excellent example. The latest analysis would seem to indicate that the computer engineers made some choices that have had unintended consequences. In this case overriding the wishes of the pilots by assuming the plane was crashing, when it wasn't, and not allowing the human pilots to correct the computer's decisions.
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A very taxing problem for all
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/03/2017
» Every government wants taxes. It is, after all, how the salaries get paid, and how funds are raised for re-election and looking after the country, often in that order. Consider the UK as an example. Starting in April, there will be a new set of tax regulations based on the IR35 guidelines. With the uncertainty surrounding this change there has been a rush of IT contractors leaving government positions, in many cases over half, halting a wide range of projects. This has been happening for over a year now with, as an example, the Ministry of Defence losing 30 out of 32 contractors last year. When the process of government is stopped because of taxes imposed, you're probably doing something wrong.
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A quantum leap for computers
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/02/2017
» According to Prof Winfried Hensinger of the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, he and his team have the first practical design for a quantum computer. Like millions of others, I have struggled to come to an understanding of quantum mechanics and how a quantum computer might work.
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Not all cookies created equal
Life, James Hein, Published on 15/02/2017
» I was on a technical support call recently after having problems accessing a service provider's product. The advice given was "Use Internet Explorer and make sure to clear all cookies and cache". There are multiple issues here. The first is coding to a single browser platform, and all too often that is still Internet Explorer. According to www.w3counter.com, the current usage stats for browsers is Chrome at the top (with 58.4%), followed by Safari (13.3%), Firefox (9.5%), IE and Edge (8.1%), and Opera (4.4%). Another problem is with the advice to clear all cookies. This is like using an atomic bomb to get rid of a mosquito. If you have years of cookies working for you, then one bad one shouldn't be taken care of by getting rid of the lot. I advised the help-desk staff member to review their suggestions, especially since this was the first time I had used IE to access that site, so there would be a fresh cookie.
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Beware ransomware
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/02/2017
» Ransomware can hit anywhere. In the town of Cockrell Hill, Texas, with a population of just over 4,000 souls, the police force there was hit and lost over eight years of evidence. The attackers used a "cloned email address imitating a department issued email address" to deliver the ransomware and then requested four Bitcoins worth about US$3,600 (126,000 baht) to decrypt the files. Any good IT department would have decent backups but as it turned out this process had only backed up the encrypted files. After talking to the FBI they were told that there was no guarantee they would get their data back so they wiped their servers and restarted with eight years of data and videos destroyed.
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Size counts in the world of IT
Life, James Hein, Published on 04/05/2016
» When it comes to implementing systems, it is all about scale. If you have ever been a system tester you will know that what works one at a time may not work well if a whole bunch of them are processed all at once. Those who have ever used an old fashioned typewriter will understand this. Volume testing and scalability of system is one of the biggest problems a development testing team faces.
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Plugged in, but not all wired up
Life, James Hein, Published on 27/04/2016
» So I was talking to a young couple the other day who expressed some surprise at me having a fixed line ADSL connection as my primary internet source at home. They were part of the ever-growing group of younger users that do not have any fixed line services, phone or data. According to the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) for example they have found that in the past two years American households having no fixed line services and relying on mobile networks instead has doubled to 20%. This has been accompanied by a drop in ADSL and satellite connections. So while wired connections are still in the majority in the US they are falling.
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Web standard development in the pipeline
Life, James Hein, Published on 16/07/2014
» Samsung, Dell, Intel, Broadcom and others have started the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) with the aim of uniting on standards for internet development. Or, in their own words, “will seek to define a common communication framework based on industry standard technologies to wirelessly connect and intelligently manage the flow of information among devices, regardless of form factor, operating system or service provider” and “it is our intention to create a specification and an open source project that will allow interoperability for all types of devices and operating systems”. For the moment this announcement is about there is to it, with more information to follow later.
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